Temporary storage of cigars

[SCgarman]

Greetings, I have sold my house and will be moving out in about 2 weeks and living in limbo until my wife finds out whether we move to Tampa for her job or we remain in Virginia. I have about 40 boxes in my end table style cabinet humidor. The humidor will be dismantled and be put in storage with the rest of our stuff until we find a new home. What would be a suitable means of storage? I have a large cooler (not sure if it will hold 40 boxes), and I also have a large Sterilite plastic storage container. Would the plastic container be adequate for a month or 2 if I place weather strip around the seal where the lid sits? Any suggestions? Comments? Thank you! Cheers.  John

[El Hoze]

I would think you'd be just fine keeping them in large Ziplock weather shield (or similar) containers with some Boveda packs. The seals on those are pretty good. 

[gweilgi]

FWIW, this is what I did when I moved my cigars across continents:

I gently vacuum-packed each box or put the larger ones into ziploc bags.

They then went into large storage containers, with crumpled up newspaper to prevent shifting.

I then put brown parcel tape round the lids, to seal them.

My cigars spent three months in storage and were air-freighted, without any harm or radical loss of humidity.

 

 

[Winchester21]

I like the idea of a large cooler with oasis or bovedia paks. Keeps the temp and humidity pretty close to ideal

[SCgarman]

1 hour ago, gweilgi said:

FWIW, this is what I did when I moved my cigars across continents:

I gently vacuum-packed each box or put the larger ones into ziploc bags.

They then went into large storage containers, with crumpled up newspaper to prevent shifting.

I then put brown parcel tape round the lids, to seal them.

My cigars spent three months in storage and were air-freighted, without any harm or radical loss of humidity.

 

 

I still want them to be accessible so I can smoke them while we are in limbo. I think I will modify the sterilite plastic container so my cigar oasis unit will go in there with the boxes. I will be able to plug in the oasis and power it up anywhere near a power outlet. Just need to do a practice run to see if everything fits, fingers crossed.

[SCgarman]

They all fit barely. No room for a humidifier. I will just place weather strip seal around where the lid sits on the container and call it good. The summer months are at peak humidity weather wise anyway.

[luvdunhill]

You can get containers with an integrated weather strip - usually called "WeatherTight" boxes. Iris makes some (sold on Amazon) and these are basically resold by ContainerStore.

You can see the seal in this pic:

[1moreVice]

3 hours ago, NYgarman said:

They all fit barely. No room for a humidifier. I will just place weather strip seal around where the lid sits on the container and call it good. The summer months are at peak humidity weather wise anyway.

Looks like plenty of room for a bunch of Bovedas or HF beads - Not having a means for humidification seems risky to me. 

[SCgarman]

Problem solved. 50 gallon container. Weather stripping around lid seal. Cigar Oasis inside for humidification. Access to all boxes for cigar selection.

[PigFish]

17 hours ago, NYgarman said:

I still want them to be accessible so I can smoke them while we are in limbo. I think I will modify the sterilite plastic container so my cigar oasis unit will go in there with the boxes. I will be able to plug in the oasis and power it up anywhere near a power outlet. Just need to do a practice run to see if everything fits, fingers crossed.

If you have a truly air tight box (water tight box) then adding the free water would be a real bad idea. Free water wants to make take the entire space to equilibrium. This, in theory is 100rH. One warm day will cook water out of the unit and next thing you know it is raining in there. You need either a net rH negative ambient AND a leaky humidor to support it. Bovida packs are not free water. A hydra or any type of humidifier (such as I use, or other makers use for automated systems) BAD IDEA!

-Piggy

[Fugu]

Was going to say almost the same. Your concern should be much less so about humidity (a 40 boxes equivalent of tobacco will hold/buffer enough moisture for 'ages', as long as the container is half-decently sealed), but more so as to how you'd keep the temperature stable. If you manage to maintain temperature stability over that period, two months as you say, I think you'll be absolutely fine.

[PigFish]

Now that you have room, if you need a buffer, you make a great case for properly hydrated cat litter products. While not a fan myself, in this circumstance, they are plentiful, cheap and you have the room. Please reconsider the hydra!

-Piggy

[SCgarman]

30 minutes ago, PigFish said:

Now that you have room, if you need a buffer, you make a great case for properly hydrated cat litter products. While not a fan myself, in this circumstance, they are plentiful, cheap and you have the room. Please reconsider the hydra!

-Piggy

I will most likely not keep the lid completely sealed shut. Will experiment with it open to different degrees to keep around 64% humidity on digital hydrometer inside plastic container. We will be most likely hotel dwelling until we know Florida bound or staying in Virginia. I keep the A/C in hotels cranked up very cool, as my body runs warm. Most likely about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. My cigar oasis unit usually doesn't need to run humidity fan in summer and I usually keep the doors on humidor cabinet open due to my bedroom averaging 65 % humidity. Summertime here on east coast is usually plenty humid for cigars depending on how much your home A.C. dries out the Air. The harder part is not maintaining cigars in between homes. It's maintaining my mental health and the not knowing where we are going to live! Well, the wife is a defense contractor and this goes with the requirements of the job. We made a nice chunk of change from the sale of our house and this solid gold beauty will be my belated fathers day gift! 

[SCgarman]

Have the lid slid open about 4 inches. Maintaining 68F/65%H. All should be well. At least I can carry the plastic container. The end table cabinet, uh nope. 2 big and heavy.

[PapaDisco]

El Bacon Poisson is right.  Don't put a bucket of H2O (aka "Oasis") in there, and leaving the lid ajar just seems kludgy to me.  At least you have free A/C with the hotel room gig, so stable temps should be reliable . . . unless the maids turn off the A/C after cleaning one day (they do that to me all the damn time!) and your room goes to Florida temps.

The sure fire solution is Bovedas with your plastic lid closed.  It would only take a few to last you 2 months, since your cigars and their boxes already have a good amount of water in them.

Good luck with the move!  Sounds like an exciting transition!